This blog follows the history of psychiatry

The Geography of Depression

What’s the country with the smallest percentage of depressed people? Click here to find out. This extensive map, published yesterday in the Washington Post, details the rates of depression diagnoses across the world:

The article is based on a new study by researchers at Australia’s University of Queensland published this week in the journal PLOS Medicine. The authors of this study, the Post article reads, “used data on the prevalence, incidence and duration of depression to determine the social and public health burden of the disorder around the world. Globally, they found, depression is the second-leading cause of disability, with slightly more than 4 percent of the world’s population diagnosed with it. The map at the top of this page shows how much of the population in each country has received a diagnosis of clinical depression.”